| ▲ | PorciiVorbesc 2 hours ago |
| I still don't get why EU governments and agencies don't standardize around an already existing industry proven OS the EU already has domestically, which is SUSE, and need to each go reinventing the wheel their own way, which leads to higher costs and more fragmentation across the EU. I heard the reason was that NL doesn't know if SUSE will be sold off again and might end up in the hands of some US PE, but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies related to sovereign national security like those making operating systems. You can just do things when you want to. You literally have that power. Exercise it for once FFS. |
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| ▲ | dtech 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > I heard the reason was that NL doesn't know if SUSE will be sold off again and might end up in the hands of some US PE, but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies The Dutch government can famously prevent sales of German and Luxembourgish companies yes. |
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| ▲ | PorciiVorbesc 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I meant the EU, at EU level, not the Dutch government. Also it's not like the Dutch government can't cooperate with the other EU members like Germany and Luxembourg on such vital topics. Unless of course trust inside the EU is so lackluster that the Dutch government can't be sure where Germany and Luxembourg will stand, in which case it's already over for the EU. | | |
| ▲ | eterm 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The EU level doesn't have enforcement mechanisms, EU law is applied through member states changing their laws. | |
| ▲ | graemep 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Does the EU have the power to block sales of companies on national security grounds? Or to get member states to standardise on software? Its probably a good thing they do not have a standard, or at this point it would be Windows and pushing change through at the EU level would not be fast. | | |
| ▲ | PorciiVorbesc 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >Does the EU have the power to block sales of companies on national security grounds? Not on defense and national security, that's up to individual EU member states, but the EU does veto corporate mergers and acquisitions on Competition Law (Antitrust). So just find a loophole in that and use it to prevent SUSE be taken over by non-EU nations. | | |
| ▲ | toyg an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | The governments "just" doing this or that, are typically the tyrannical or unhinged variety you don't want to live under. If your law is written decently and you have a functioning judiciary, chances of a loopholes surviving scrutiny will be very low. The European Commission could definitely ask governments (the European Council) to agree a new treaty or protocol that grants them veto powers on "federal security grounds", for sure. The European Parliament would likely rubber-stamp it too. Considering the current (and increasing) right-wing majorities across the continent, though, I find such scenario very unlikely. | | |
| ▲ | PorciiVorbesc 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | >The governments "just" doing this or that, are typically the tyrannical or unhinged variety you don't want to live under. You can always "just do things" whenever you want by interpreting or changing the laws first to fit your desired goal. And so there, now it's legal, because I just changed the rules to make it so. Same how the "we'll now have to accept all those migrants illegally crossing our border without asking our voters if its what they want" was done, they decided overnight that its legal. Or how they can just block the right wing from winning elections in order to "just protect democracy". We're already under tyrannical rule, except the system abuse just acts on the wrong topics. | |
| ▲ | ElevenLathe an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | As an American, EU politics is such a fascinating bizarro world. Imagine the right wingers being a bulwark against unhinged expansion of executive authority on grounds of national security! It would be like statehouse Republicans blocking the Patriot Act. Unthinkable. | | |
| ▲ | toyg 39 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Well, the same in the other direction: imagine the free marketeers by definition, installing an autocrat big on isolationist policies, the dismantling of judiciary separation, and on picking winners in the market... Absurd! And still, here we are. Humans are funny and inconsistent like that. | |
| ▲ | graemep 5 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think it demonstrates the extent to which left and right are artificial groupings that owe more to tribalism than anything rational. In the UK it was the right wing Conservative party which introduced same sex marriage. I am pretty sure the Republicans are unlikely to do that. Of course some things are clear. Privatisation is right wing, nationalisation is left wing, but you never really had the latter in the US! | |
| ▲ | nottorp 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | By the way liberals in EU are center right to right :) |
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| ▲ | an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | Alexander-Barth an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | For context, the US once prevented that a German company AIXTRON was sold to a Chinese investor in 2016 (perhaps for good reasons). To me it would sound like a good deal for the Netherlands and Luxembourg/Germany if Netherlands would uses SUSE and the Luxembourg/Germany would step in to keep in in the EU. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/02/us-blocks-chi... |
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| ▲ | p_l 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Might be related to NixOS being strongly related to Netherlands and them picking local |
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| ▲ | PorciiVorbesc 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah well that's why the EU federal idea is and will be a failure. It wishes to be the challenger to the US and China hegemony in theory, but then every individual country wants to be its own special mini-boss in its own playground hoping they'll be at the top of the helm, that develops and uses its own separate things that will hopefully get adopted by the other EU members. | | |
| ▲ | nutjob2 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You have it in reverse. A federal EU enables EU countries to pool sovereignty and strength to protect itself from the US and China. It neither needs to or wants to challenge anyone. A federal system allows EU wide decisions to be made quickly and without petty parochial concerns. Constituent states rightly can choose to make their own decisions in matters like this, it hardly effects anyone else, and they can choose to collaborate. | |
| ▲ | cgio 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is that why US failed while building CP/m, Unix a few, Dos, Windows, MacOs, OS/2,…? A successful market does not impose monopolies. The more, the merrier. | | |
| ▲ | PorciiVorbesc an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > A successful market does not impose monopolies. The more, the merrier. Yeah but when it comes to national sovereignty you can't let your own products get steamrolled by the entrenched monopolies of your adversaries (Google, Microsoft, AWS, etc) just because you're gullible and still think you can play by the rules of idealistic 'free market' and come out on top, while your adversaries protect their monopolies to weaponize them against you on the "free market", suppressing or destroying your domestic industry and making you indefinitely dependent on them (US big-tech, Chinese EV industry, etc). China has achieved a SW industry superior to the EU with much less money, simply because it has banned US big-tech from its market, preventing its own small domestic players from being crushed by US giants. It's also how countries like Italy, Japan and Korea built strong car industries post-WW2, as they banned superior import cars (often US ones) from their markets, till their own industry could catch up and be competitive internationally. India does the same. | | |
| ▲ | toyg an hour ago | parent [-] | | Cooperation and competition can be partial. Google and Microsoft compete internally and then cooperate when fighting external forces. There is no reason why this cannot work for European companies too. The problem has more to do with the weak sense of belonging to a supranational identity. Californians and New Yorkers both identify as Americans before they identify as members of their home state; the opposite is true of most Europeans still. Change is slow. | | |
| ▲ | PorciiVorbesc 20 minutes ago | parent [-] | | >Californians and New Yorkers both identify as Americans before they identify as members of their home state; the opposite is true of most Europeans still. You don't need to completely erase and crush ethnic and national identities in order to standardize on technical platform for the common market. |
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| ▲ | azan_ an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | When the market is as huge as US, there's lots of space for competition. Sadly in how EU is currently structured it would most likely be just german "Microsoft", spanish "Microsoft", french "Microsoft" etc. |
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| ▲ | graemep 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies related to sovereign national security like those making operating systems Last time I looked it was a Swedish owned German company. The government of the Netherlands has limited power there. Given its history and performance its quite likely to get sold and might end up in American or Chinese hands or anything really. |
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